NHS works to ‘Spread the Love’ with blanket project

With the end of the school year quickly approaching, the Trenton High School National Honor’s Society is wrapping up another successful year of volunteering and fundraisers. Most recently, the Trojan students participated in their annual Spread the Love event.

Spread the Love is an event started by Beaumont-Trenton Hospital Spiritual Support and Volunteer Services. Volunteers sign up to make fleece tie blankets and the hospital’s Chaplains pass them along to patients.

This was the sixth year the Trenton Student Council participated in the event and longtime NHS advisor Lori Holcomb had 120 students show up to help out.

Each student brought a one-and-a-half-yard piece of fleece and they partner up with another member to create their blanket. Once they’re donated to the hospital, the Chaplains put tags on the blankets so the patient knows who it came from. All in all, 72 blankets were made to be donated. The completed blankets were donated directly to the hospital from the students to be passed out to the patients.

Holcomb loves being able to give back to the community with her members.

“(We enjoy) teaching our students to give back to the community,” she said. “We have received so many thank you notes from patients or their families, thanking us for making the blankets.”

The NHS students have even dealt with direct connections to their school.

One of the high school’s custodians was ill and in the hospital receiving care and ended up on the receiving end of one of the NHS’s blankets.

A regular substitute of the district’s husband was ill and was a receiver of an NHS blanket before he passed away.

“He unfortunately passed away, (but) Judy said that her grandson sleeps with grandpa’s blanket every night so that he can be close to grandpa so he doesn’t miss him so much,” Holcomb said.

As the school year winds down, Holcomb and her NHS students now turn to their spring plans, including a Cereal Drive, Relay for Life, Executive Office elections, senior goodbyes and graduation.